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A beautiful, startling, and candid memoir about growing up without boundaries, where Ariel Leve recalls with candor and level of sensitivity the turbulent time she endured as the only real child of your unstable poet for a mother and a much loved but basically absent daddy, and explores the results of an psychologically harrowing childhood as she looks for refuge from days gone by and recovers that which was lost. Ariel Leve grew up in Manhattan with an eccentric mother she describes as "a poet, an designer, a self-appointed troublemaker and attention seeker". Leve learned to be her own mother or father, taking care of herself and her mother's needs. There would be uncontrolled, impulsive rages accompanied by denial, disavowed responsibility, and then extreme outpourings of love. How does a child learn to feel safe in this topsy-turvy world of conditional love? Leve captures the chaos and long lasting impact of an child's life under siege and explores how the coping mechanisms she developed to make it through later incapacitated her as a grown-up. There were material comforts but no emotional safety aside from summer trips to her father's home in Southeast Asia - an escape that was terminated after he attempted to gain custody. Following death of an adoring caretaker, a succession of replacements elevated Leve - relationships that led to intense connection and loss. It was not until decades later, when Leve migrated to the other part of the world, that she could start to emancipate herself from days gone by. In a relationship with a guy who experienced children, caring for them yielded quality of that which was missing. In revealing her haunting account, Leve seeks to understand the effects of chronic mental health maltreatment on the child's producing brain and learn how to build a life for herself that she never dreamed possible: an unabbreviated life.
